Twitter: how close should companies get?

How social should companies be? Is there a point at which you just don’t want big corporations siddling up to you on networks like Twitter?

Meghan @ Hodgepodge thinks so. In a lively post she poses the question to what degree and at what point can a company say it truly gets social media? She gives the example of using Twitter for technical support.

While more and more PR companies are offering blog monitoring, how can companies be more involved with potential problems that could be being Twittered? Meghan makes the great point that companies should spend less time building up a great Twitter follower numbers and concentrate more on the minutiae of the myriad of conversations taking place around brands.

I’ve tried to cover some more ways Twitter can be used at the corporate level in this tutorial on Twitter.